Date: 9 April 2024
Wendy Brown is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential American political theorists today. Her work has focused on the history of political thought, political economy, Continental philosophy, cultural theory and critical legal theory. She is best known for her interrogation of identity politics in States of Injury (1995); her critical analysis of tolerance in Regulating Aversion (2006); her account of globalization and the situation of nation states in Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (2010); and her two main studies of neoliberalism’s assault on democratic institutions in Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (2015) and In the Ruins of Neoliberalism (2019). Brown is currently exploring how political freedom can be made responsive to the climate crisis. In this lecture, Professor Brown presented some of her insights on 'reparative democracy'.